guests coming with a determination to please and to be pleased. I do not know that many important matters were arranged, for the welfare of the magazine, at these dinners; but the hearts of the contributors were opened, and with the expansion of the heart the intellect widened also. If there had been any shades of jealousy amongst them, they faded away before the light of the friendly carousal; if there was any envy, it died. All the fences and restraints of authorship were cast off, and the natural human being was disclosed.

Amongst others, Charles Lamb came to most of these dinners, always dressed in black (his old snuffcoloured suit having been dismissed for years); always kind and genial; conversational, not talkative, but quick in reply; eating little, and drinking moderately with the rest. Allan Cunningham, a stalwart man, was generally there; very Scotch in aspect, but ready to do a good turn to any one. His talk was not too abundant, although he was a voluminous writer in prose. His songs, not unworthy of being compared with even those of Burns, are (as everybody knows) excellent. His face shone at these festivities. Reynolds came always. His good temper and vivacity were like condiments at the feast. There also came, once or twice, the Rev. H. F. Cary, the quiet gentleness of whose face almost interfered with its real intelligence. Yet he spoke well and with readiness, on any subject that he chose to discuss. He was very intimate with Lamb, who latterly often dined with him, and was always punctual: By Cot's plessing we will not be absent at the Grace" (he writes in 1834). Lamb's taste was very homely: he liked tripe and cow-heel, and once when he was suggesting a particular dish to his friend, he wrote

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were talking of roast shoulder of mutton and onion sauce; but I scorn to prescribe hospitalities." Charles had great regard for Mr. Cary; and in his last letter (written on his death bed) he inquired for a book, which he was very uneasy about, and which he thought he had left at Mrs. Dyer's; "It is Mr. Cary's book (he says), and I would not lose it for the world." Cary was entirely without vanity; and he, who had traversed the ghastly regions of the Inferno, interchanged little courtesies on equal terms with workers who had never travelled beyond the pages of "The London Magazine." No one (it is said) who has performed anything great ever looks big upon it. Thomas Hood was there,

almost silent, except when he shot out some irresistible pun, and disturbed the gravity of the company. Hood's labours were poetic, but his sports were passerine. It is remarkable that he, who was capable of jesting even on his own prejudices and predilections, should not (like Catullus) have brought down the "Sparrow," and enclosed him in an ode. Lamb admired and was very familiar with him. "What a fertile genuis he is " (Charles Lamb writes to Bernard Barton), "and quiet withal." He then expatiates particularly on Hood's sketch of "Very Deaf indeed!" wherein a footpad has stopped an old gentleman, but cannot make him understand what he wants, although the fellow is firing a pistol into his ear trumpet: "you'd like him very much," he adds. Although Lamb likeď him very much, he was a little annoyed once by Hood writing a comical essay in imitation of (and so much like) one of his own, that people generally thought that Elia had awakened in an unruly mood. Hazlitt attended once or twice; but he was a rather silent guest, rising into emphatic talk only when

some political discussion (very rare) stimulated him. Mr. De Quincy appeared at only one of these dinners. The expression of his face was intelligent, but cramped and somewhat peevish. He was selfinvolved, and did not add to the cheerfulness of the meeting. I have consulted this gentleman's three essays, of which Charles Lamb is professedly the subject; but I cannot derive from them anything illustrative of my friend Lamb's character. I have been mainly struck therein by De Quincy's attacks on Hazlitt; to whom the essays had no relation. I am aware that the two authors (Hazlitt and De Quincy) had a quarrel in 1823; Hazlitt having claimed certain theories or reasonings which the other had propounded as his own. In reply to Mr. De Quincy's claims to have had a familiar acquaintance with Charles Lamb (in 1821 and 1823), I have to observe that during these years (when I was almost continually with him) I never saw Mr. De Quincy at his house, and never heard Lamb speak of him or refer to his writings on any occasion. His visits to Lamb were surely very rare.

John Clare, a peasant from Northamptonshire, and a better poet than Bloomfield, was one of the visitors. He was thoroughly rustic; dressed in conspicuously country fashion, and was as simple as a daisy. His delight at the wonders of London formed the staple of his talk. This was often stimulated into extravagance by the facetious fictions of Reynolds. Poor fellow, he died insane.

About this time Lamb determined to leave London; and in 1823 he moved into Colebrook Cottage, Islington, a small detached white house of six rooms. "The New River, rather elderly by this time" (he says), "runs, if a moderate walking pace can be so termed, close to the foot of the house;

behind, is a spacious garden, &c., and the cheerful dining-room is studded all over and rough with old books: I feel like a great lord; never having had a house before."

From this place (which a friend of his christened "petty Venice ") he used often to walk into London, to breakfast or dine with an acquaintance. For walking was always grateful to him. When

confined to his room in the India House, he counted it amongst his principal recreations, and even now, with the whole world of leisure before him, it ranked amongst his daily enjoyments. By himself, or with an acquaintance, and subsequently with Hood's dog Dash (whose name should have been Rover), he wandered over all the roads and bypaths of the adjoining country. He was a peripatetic, in every way, beyond the followers of Aristotle. Walking occupied his energies; and when he returned home, he (like Sarah Battle), "unbent his mind over a book." "I cannot sit and think is his phrase. If he now and then stopped for a minute at a rustic public house, tired with the excursive caprices of Dash-beguiled perhaps by the simple attractions of a village sign—I hold him excusable for the glass of porter which sometimes invigorated him in his fatigue.

In the course of these walks he traversed all the green regions which lie on the north and northeast of the metropolis. In London he loved to frequent those streets where the old bookshops were, Wardour Street, Princes Street, Seven Dials (where the shop has been long closed): he loved also Gray's Inn, in the garden of which he met Dodd, just before his death ("with his buffoon mask taken off"); and the Temple, into which you pass from the noise and crowd of Fleet Street,-into

the quiet and "ample squares and green recesses, where the old Dial, "the garden god of Christian gardens," then told of Time, and where the still living fountain sends up its song into the listening

air.

Of the Essays of "Elia," written originally for the London Magazine, I feel it difficult to speak. They are the best amongst the good: his best. I see that they are genial, delicate, terse, full of thought and full of humour; that they are delightfully personal; and when he speaks of himself you cannot hear too much that they are not imitations, but adoptions. We encounter his likings and fears, his fancies (his nature) in all. The words have an import never known before: the syllables have expanded their meaning, like opened flowers; the goodness of others is heightened by his own tenderness; and what is in nature hard and bad is qualified (qualified, not concealed) by the tender light of pity, which always intermingles with his own vision. Gravity and laughter, fact and fiction are heaped together, leavened in each case by charity and toleration; and all are marked by a wise humanity. Lamb's humour, I imagine, often reflected (sometimes, I hope, relieved) the load of pain that always weighed on his own heart.

The first of the Essays ("The South Sea House") appeared in the month of August, 1820: the last ("Captain Jackson") in November, 1824. Lamb's literary prosperity during this period was at the

The first Essays of Elia were published by Taylor and Hessey under the title "Elia," in 1823. The second Essays were, together with the "Popular Fallacies," collected and published under the title of "The Last Essays of Elia," by Moxon, in 1833.